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Alec Baldwin takes aim at Hollywood in new memoir

Alec Baldwin with a copy of his new book <i>Nevertheless: A Memoir</i>.

Alec Baldwin with a copy of his new book Nevertheless: A Memoir. Photo: Getty

American comedian and actor Alec Baldwin has taken aim at some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and at Tinseltown itself, in his new memoir Nevertheless.

Although Baldwin has risen to the top of the entertainment industry, the star calls his line of work a “rabbit hole” and describes Hollywood as a “bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself”. 

“I never imagined I would do what I’ve done for a living or see what I’ve seen,” Baldwin writes.

“I never wanted to be an actor because it seems so trite. But as I moved along the game board and thought I might be invited to play a bit longer, much of that cynicism fell away.”

Nor does he leave the reader in any doubt about how the book came to be.

“I’m not actually writing this book to discuss my work, my opinions or my life,” says Baldwin, who is best known as Jack Donaghy on NBC sitcom 30 Rock or for his impersonation of US President Donald Trump on sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.

“I’m writing it because I was paid to write it. And as we go along, you’ll know that the mercenary force is strong in this one.”

The non-fiction bestseller follows his first book, A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce, detailing his divorce and custody battle with LA Confidential bombshell Kim Basinger. 

The pair met on the set of The Marrying Man (known as Too Hot To Handle in Australia) in 1991.

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger were married for almost nine years. They split in 2002. Photo: Getty

The memoir also includes an impressive blacklist, including Harrison Ford, who replaced him as action hero Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October.

“Ford, in person, is a little man, short, scrawny, and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if it’s coming from behind a door,” Baldwin wrote.

Midnight Express, Wall Street and Snowden director Oliver Stone also takes a beating in the 272-page biography. The pair made the movie Talk Radio together.

Baldwin calls Stone a “Machiavellian filmmaker”, who would “throw his own mother down a flight of stairs if it would help him get his project financed, get the show he wanted or simply get the shot he wanted or simply get his way”.

Besides the pull-no-punches approach, readers also learn of a childhood in Long Island where he felt burdened by his family’s financial struggles and parents’ unhappy marriage, as well as an aspiration for politics as a university student in Washington DC.

“The worst mistakes I’ve made in this life live forever on the internet. Online, people remind of me of them every day.”

Watch Alec Baldwin talk about what it’s like to play Donald Trump:

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